The present invention relates generally to the field of medical diagnostic systems, such as imaging systems of various modalities. More particularly, the invention relates to a technique for providing patient data and reports in conjunction with such diagnostic systems.
This section is intended to introduce the reader to various aspects of art which may be related to various aspects of the present invention which are described and/or claimed below. This discussion is believed to be helpful in providing the reader with background information to facilitate a better understanding of the various aspects of the present invention. Accordingly, it should be understood that these statements are to be read in this light, and not as admissions of prior art.
Medical diagnostic and imaging systems are ubiquitous in modern health care facilities. Such systems provide invaluable tools for identifying, diagnosing and treating physical conditions and greatly reduce the need for surgical diagnostic intervention. In many instances, final diagnosis and treatment proceed only after an attending physician or radiologist has complemented conventional examinations with detailed images of relevant areas and tissues via one or more imaging modalities.
Currently, a number of modalities exist for medical diagnostic and imaging systems. These include computed tomography (CT) systems, x-ray systems (including both conventional and digital or digitized imaging systems), magnetic resonance (MR) systems, positron emission tomography (PET) systems, ultrasound systems, nuclear medicine systems, and so forth. In many instances, these modalities complement one another and offer the physician a range of techniques for imaging particular types of tissue, organs, physiological systems, and so forth. Health care institutions often dispose several such imaging systems at a single facility or at multiple facilities, permitting its physicians to draw upon such resources as required by particular patient needs.
Modern medical diagnostic systems typically include circuitry for acquiring image data and for transforming the data into a useable form, which is then processed to create a reconstructed image of features of interest within the patient. The image data acquisition and processing circuitry is often referred to as a xe2x80x9cscannerxe2x80x9d regardless of the modality, because some sort of physical or electronic scanning often occurs in the imaging process. The particular components of the system and related circuitry, of course, differ greatly between modalities due to their different physics and data processing requirements.
Medical diagnostic systems of the type described above are often called upon to produce reliable and understandable images with a corresponding patient report. While such images and patient reports have proven extremely valuable in diagnostic systems, further improvements are still needed. For example, to detect coronary calcification in a patient, computer tomography (CT) images of the patient""s heart are generated and reviewed to identify calcium deposits. In one type of diagnostic system, the CT screening application involves a patient report, which details out the study results. This may include a percentile value, which details which risk category the patient belongs to in a population. Current calcium-scoring packages currently list out only a calcium score and a percentile value dependent on the age and gender of the patient. However, calcium score is only one of the many factors, which go into the assessment of cardiovascular disease (CVD) risk.
While this information is useful in assessment of CVD, there is a need to provide the physician the capability to create a customized diagnostic message based on other factors such as cholesterol, exercise levels, blood pressure etc. Thus, there is a particular need to present the patient with a customized diagnostic message, which is created by considering all of the patient factors and their interplay based on current diagnostic and operational data and further provides historical data for comparative purposes.
The above discussed and other drawbacks and deficiencies are overcome or alleviated by a method and system for associating medical imaging data with a customized patient report. The system includes a memory for storing a plurality of patient specific attributes and a plurality of user defined rules, the attributes include patient specific medical image data. A stored program is configured to apply a rule to a corresponding attribute and allow an end user to at least one of create, edit, and add at least one of the attributes and the user defined rules. A processor operates with the stored program for processing to establish a conclusion to the rule. An output device is included and configured to generate the customized patient report having the conclusion in text format. The text in the conclusion is end user configurable, as well as the attributes and rules.
The method includes storing a plurality of patient specific attributes and a plurality of rules; the attributes include patient specific medical image data. The method further includes configuring a stored program to apply a rule to corresponding attributes, and configuring the stored program to allow an end user to at least one of create, edit, and add at least one of the attributes and defined rules. The method also includes processing the rule to establish a conclusion to the rule and configuring an output device to generate the customized patient report having the conclusion in text format. The method allows the conclusion, as well as the attributes and rules, to be end user configurable.